Lee Van Cleef
☼ Born on 9 December 1925, in Somerville, New Jersey, USA
† Died on 16 December 1989, in Oxnard, California, USA, cause heart attack
BiographyOne of the great movie villains, Clarence Leroy Van Cleef, Jr. was born in Somerville, New Jersey, to Marion Lavinia (Van Fleet) and Clarence LeRoy Van Cleef, Sr. His parents were of Dutch ancestry. Van Cleef started out as an accountant. He served in the U.S. Navy aboard minesweepers and sub chasers during World War II. After the war he worked as an office administrator, becoming involved in amateur theatrics in his spare time. An audition for a professional role led to a touring company job in "Mr. Roberts". His performance was seen by Stanley Kramer, who cast him as henchman Jack Colby in High Noon (1952), a role that brought him great recognition despite the fact that he had no dialogue. For the next decade, he played a string of memorably villainous characters, primarily in westerns but also in crime dramas such as The Big Combo (1955). His hawk nose and steely, slit eyes seemed destined to keep him always in the realm of heavies, but in the mid 1960s Sergio Leone cast him as the tough but decent Col. Mortimer opposite Clint Eastwood in For a Few Dollars More (1965). A new career as a western hero (or at least anti-hero) opened up, and Van Cleef became an international star, though in films of decreasing quality. In the 1980s, he moved easily into action and martial-arts movies and starred in The Master (1984), a TV series featuring almost non-stop martial arts action. He died of a heart attack in December 1989 and was buried at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills.
In the role of actor
Chameleon (24/04/2015)
The “James Bond of journalism” is profiled in Chameleon. Anas Aremeyaw Anas is an investigative journalist in Ghana, who lives by the three basis principles of naming, shaming and jailing. Very few people have seen Anas’ face and he uses his extreme undercover methods to help bring down criminals across the country. Chameleon is a […]
Blindspot 2014: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (24/07/2014)
This month I head to the old west for, Sergio Leone’s classic 1966 Spaghetti Western, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The third film in Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, the film is set during the American Civil War and focuses on “Blondie,” aka the Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood), who has an uneasy partnership […]